Japan and Ecology: Room to Improve

By ANDREW POLLACK,

Published: July 31, 1992

TOKYO, July 30—
At the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro last month, Japan pledged more than $7 billion to help other nations fight pollution. But halfway toward the summit of Mount Fuji, a four-story parking garage is being planned.

The difference between the summits shows how far this industrial powerhouse has come in environmental awareness and, some say, how far it has to go.

Having long been perceived as an ecological outcast, Japan is trying to transform itself into a champion of planetary protection and a leader in setting world environmental policy. With its vast financial resources and technological prowess, the nation could make a significant contribution to solving problems like global warming and acid rain, experts say.

But environmentalists here say Japan must improve its own record before it can lead others. Skeptics say Japan's Government and industry are interested more in public relations and profits from the sale of environmentally safe products than in planetary salvation.

While Japan has done a better job than most countries in cleaning up its pollution, they say, it has not been as kind to the environments of other countries. Recently, in a development that caused great embarrassment here, a court in Malaysia ordered the shutdown of a factory owned partly by one of Japan's largest chemical companies, Mitsubishi Kasei, because the plant's radioactive wastes were endangering local residents. Wood From Tropical Forests

Moreover, conservationists say, while Japan has developed impressive technology for cutting emissions and reducing energy use, it has not shown a deep commitment to preserving the natural environment or curbing its appetite for development.

Japan is the world's largest importer of wood from tropical forests, has resisted a ban on whaling and has been embroiled in controversies in the last few years over its use of drift-net fishing and imports of ivory. At home, it has built dams on virtually all its rivers, threatened coral reefs with overdevelopment and plastered its countryside with golf courses.

"What Japan is saying to the world and what Japan is doing here are quite different, and I am ashamed," said Dr. Michio Naito, a physician who lives near the base of Mount Fuji and is leading a fight to stop a prefectural government from building the 500-vehicle parking garage at an elevation of 7,600 feet, about 4,800 feet in elevation below the summit.

He said the existing one-level parking lot at that location has already caused a problem by funneling rainwater into a powerful stream that has carved out a gully, knocked over trees and deposited a load of garbage at the base of the mountain that is regarded as a national symbol.

Government officials agree that Japan sees innovative technology as the solution to environmental problems and as its main contribution to the effort. In Energy and Industry

"Japan's interest in the global environment is stongest in the area of energy and industry rather than in nature conservation," said Katsuo Seiki, who retired last month from his job as deputy director general for global environmental affairs at the Ministry of International Trade and Industry. "In the case of the U.S., we see you are so active in nature conservation, where you might not be interested in energy conservation and recycling."

The driving force behind the environmental movement is different here than in the United States and Europe. In Japan, environmental groups are small, poorly financed and largely unheeded.

The Worldwide Fund for Nature, one of the largest groups here, has 24,000 members in Japan, compared with 1.1 million in the United States.

Rather, the ecological push here is being driven by the Government and by industry. A Perfect Arena

The Government sees the environment as perhaps the perfect arena in which Japan can respond to pressure from other nations that it contribute to world affairs in a manner commensurate with its wealth. Environmental programs require money and technology, both of which Japan has in abundance. And it doesn't require troops, which, despite a new law, Japan's Constitution still prevents from being sent abroad for military missions.

As for companies, they see huge opportunities in the sale of pollution-control equipment and environmentally friendly products. Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, a leading defense contractor, gets 6 percent of its revenues from the sale of equipment to help factories reduce emissions.

Canon recently introduced an office copier featuring what it called "amenity by eco-tech," which means that the machine emits fewer fumes and is quiet, among other attributes. Even the project to design the next generation of Japan's famous bullet train stresses not that the train will be fast but that it will be "low noise and attractive."

Some of this is mere advertising, experts say, but some of it is serious.

"In recent years their attitude has dramatically changed," said Saburo Kato, director general of the global environment department at Japan's Environment Agency, who has fought battles with industry for nearly three decades. "They want to survive in the 21st century and they well know that in the 21st century, the most important requirement of any company will be to be friendly to the earth."

Japan has come a long way in cleaning up the pollution that led to problems like the mercury poisoning in Minamata Bay in the 1960's, which came to symbolize the ravages of growth at any cost.

And spurred by the two oil crises of the 1970's that highlighted its almost complete dependence on imported fuel, Japan has done far better than most other industrialized nations in cutting its energy use and emissions of harmful gases. Japan emits less than half as much carbon dioxide per capita as the United States and less also than Britain and Germany.

But the nation is slower to respond when there is not a crisis. Slow deterioration of the ecological balance "is not serious for many people," said Toshio Furota, a lecturer in marine biology at Toho University.

Mr. Furota is leading a fight to save one of the last natural tidal flats in Tokyo Bay, a muddy area unglamorously named the Sanban-ze, or No. 3 Shoal, which is important for nurturing fish. The Government of Chiba Prefecture, adjacent to Tokyo, has plans to fill in the area to build a dock and other things.

But even on preservation, there are signs of change, if sometimes this comes under duress. Japan agreed to a ban on ivory imports in 1989 and recently agreed to stop drift-net fishing in which 30-mile-long nets designed to capture squid also kill other marine animals. Last year Japan froze its financing for the Narmada Dam in India after protests that the project would displace more than 100,000 people.

Japan's Parliament recently passed an endangered-species act. And in situations like the Mount Fuji parking garage and the Sanban-ze, conservationists are getting Government agencies to at least reconsider their plans.

"Things have changed dramatically in the last couple of years," said Cecilia Song, spokeswoman for the Worldwide Fund for Nature in Japan.

An important test for Japan now will be to put into effect the various promises made at Rio. The biggest is the pledge to provide 900 billion to 1 trillion yen, equivalent to $7 billion to $7.7 billion, over the next five years in foreign aid for environmental purposes.

Photo: Slow deterioration of the ecological balance "is not serious for many people," said Toshio Furota, a lecturer in marine biology at Toho University in Tokyo, who is leading a fight to save one of the last natural tidal flats in Tokyo Bay. He examined the flat, important for nurturing fish, at low tide. (Kaku Kurita for The New York Times)